Issue
this is my original string:
NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
I want to only add back slash to all the spaces before ':'
so, this is what I finally want:
NetworkManager/system\ connections/Wired\ 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
I need to do this in bash, so, sed, awk, grep are all ok for me.
I have tried following sed, but none of them work
echo NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1 | sed 's/ .*\(:.*$\)/\\ .*\1/g'
echo NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1 | sed 's/\( \).*\(:.*$\)/\\ \1.*\2/g'
echo NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1 | sed 's/ .*\(:.*$\)/\\ \1/g'
echo NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1 | sed 's/\( \).*\(:.*$\)/\\ \1\2/g'
thanks for answering my question. I am still quite newbie to stackoverflow, I don't know how to control the format in comment. so, I just edit my original question
my real story is:
when I do grep or use cscope to search keyword, for example "address1" under /etc folder. the result would be like:
./NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
if I use vim to open file under cursor, suppose my vim cursor is now at word "NetworkManager", then vim will understand it as
"./NetworkManager/system"
that's why I want to add "\" before space, so the search result would be more vim friendly:)
I did try to change cscope's source code, but very difficult to fully achieve this. so have to do a post replacement:(
Solution
If you only want to do the replacements if there is a : present in the string, you can check if there are at least 2 columns, setting the (output)field separator to a colon.
Data:
cat file michaelvandam@Michaels-MacBook-Pro
NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection 14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1%
Example in awk:
awk 'BEGIN {FS=OFS=":"}{if(NF>1)gsub(" ","\\ ",$1)}1' file
Output
NetworkManager/system\ connections/Wired\ 1.nmconnection:14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
NetworkManager/system connections/Wired 1.nmconnection 14 address1=10.1.10.71/24,10.1.10.1
Answered By - The fourth bird Answer Checked By - Katrina (WPSolving Volunteer)